Always on call: what a midwife can teach you about life, fear, and trust

Some jobs change the way you see time. Midwifery changes the way you see life.

In this episode of Louk on Life, I sit down with Carolien. A midwife, and someone who holds a very special place in my own story. She was one of the women there when my son Jip was born in 2022. And as I recorded and published this conversation while pregnant again, I keep coming back to one question that feels both simple and enormous:

Carolien laughs when I tell her I find her world “wonderlijk”: wonderful, strange, almost unreal. But she also gets it. Because even for her, the work keeps its sense of mystery. Birth is never just a routine. It’s never “just another day.” And maybe that’s the point.

Carolien brings us into the real rhythm of the work: weeks that never look the same, being on call, and shifts that stretch your body and your nervous system.

She talks about 12-hour services and how in many places the minimum is 24 hours. She even shares what a 72-hour on-call period can feel like: how exhaustion can hit so hard you find yourself crying in the car, simply because your body has reached its limit.

And yet, she also says she loves the variability. The unpredictability. The fact that she doesn’t have to live the same day on repeat.

It’s a reminder that not everyone is built for “stable.” Some people are built for alive.

One of the most powerful threads in our conversation is the relationship between knowledge and intuition.

Carolien is clear: you can measure a lot. You can check, test, monitor. But you can’t reduce pregnancy and birth to numbers alone, because the person living it is not a data set.

She says (in essence): you have to listen to a woman. Because she carries her child. She often senses when something is off, even when everything looks fine on paper.

And she adds a nuance that matters: intuition shouldn’t become pressure. It’s not about blaming women if they don’t feel something. It’s about taking them seriously when they do.

That, to me, is a leadership lesson in disguise: the courage to set your own assumptions aside, and stay open to what you can’t fully explain.

Carolien also talks about being honest when you don’t know. About saying: I’ve done everything. Everything looks good. And I still don’t have all the answers.

Then she says something simple and strong: the more real you are, the better.

That’s what people remember in their most vulnerable moments. Not perfection, but presence.

Midwifery, in this way, becomes a practice of humanity:

What moved me most is how often Carolien returns to awe.

Not in a dramatic way. Not as a performance. But as a quiet, repeated recognition: it is extraordinary that we exist at all. That life begins. That every person is unique.

When you stand at the threshold of life again and again, you can’t help but notice what the rest of us forget: nothing about this is guaranteed. And that makes it precious.

Even though this episode is about birth, it’s also about how we show up when things matter.

Because leadership, at its best, is not a title. It’s presence.

It’s the ability to be with people in moments that feel too big. To listen beyond the words. To take someone seriously when they say, “Something isn’t right.” To be honest when you don’t know. And to keep choosing humanity.

If you want a conversation that brings you back to what’s real, this one is for you.

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